They went through together.

  The fog beyond the door was not fog anymore.

  Swiftmane understood this the instant her body crossed the threshold. Not with her mind. Her mind was still processing the chamber behind them, the death knight's corpse, Mother's apology that had frightened her more than anything in six runs combined. Her body understood first. The way bodies always understand things that matter before the mind catches up.

  There was no fog here.

  There was something else. Something that occupied the space where fog would have been the way a mountain occupied the space where a breeze would have been. Present in ways that made the cave above feel like a painting of a cave. Like someone who had never been inside a mountain had made a very good attempt at describing one from outside.

  Every breath pulled in more than air. More than the sustaining atmosphere that had carried them through weeks of descent. More than anything her physiology had been built to process.

  The team moved close together. Instinct. The ring-light on their hands felt very small against darkness that was not quite darkness because darkness implied an absence of something and this was a presence. A vast and specific and conscious presence that pressed against Swiftmane's skin with intention. Against her mind with awareness that felt geological. Against everything she was with the kind of attention that made her feel simultaneously precious and utterly microscopic.

  Her bones ached with it. Not pain exactly. More like the feeling of standing too close to something massive that was vibrating at a frequency just below hearing. Her thoughts came slower. Not because she was afraid, though she was, but because the atmosphere itself was thick with something that crowded her own cognition out. Like trying to think in a room already full of thinking. Like trying to drown the ocean.

  Cinderhorn's breathing was audible. Wrong cadence. His injured frame working against an environment that gave no quarter to weakness.

  "This isn't level five," Cliffbreaker said.

  Nobody answered because nobody needed to. They'd run level five once and knew its particular quality. Its variable physics and stuttered time and the specific way it made your body lie to you about its own position in space. This was not that.

  This was somewhere none of them had ever been.

  Welcome, Mother said. And her voice down here was not the warmth-whisper from above. Was not the maternal guidance or the proud praise or even the vast searching quality from the questioning. Down here her voice was what those things had been reflections of. The original of which every previous communication had been a copy. It landed in Swiftmane's chest like a second heartbeat.

  My strong ones. My faithful ones. You've come so far.

  "Mother." Swiftmane kept her voice steady. Five runs had taught her that steady was what Mother responded to. "Where are we?"

  With me, Mother said. Truly with me. For the first time.

  The darkness shifted. Not light exactly. More like the darkness rearranging itself to show them the shape of the space they were standing in. A vast chamber. Stone that looked grown rather than carved. Formations that reached floor to ceiling like the mountain had been trying to make something and had stopped partway through.

  And at the chamber's far edge, another door.

  Through which Mudtusk came.

  -

  Swiftmane recognized her immediately. A sister team that also had five runs. No losses, same as her own. The two veteran units who'd traded first rotation spots for six descents because neither could stay ahead of the other long enough to establish permanent priority.

  She'd seen Mudtusk in a hundred fortress common rooms. Had bought her team drinks twice when they'd both cleared a run on the same day and felt the specific camaraderie of being one of the few teams that understood what that meant. Had competed with her in the quiet serious way that veterans competed. Respecting each other's survival as the highest possible compliment.

  What came through the door was not the Mudtusk from the alehouse.

  The Verrin female's eyes had the quality of something that had been looking at something it couldn't stop seeing. Her tusks were chipped. Her armor manifested but wrong. Pieces missing. Pieces that Mother's gifts didn't regenerate because something had gotten through them in ways gifts weren't designed to stop.

  Her team was not with her.

  Swiftmane's team registered this in the order they were standing. Misthoof first, who went very still. Then Ironhide, whose massive frame shifted into the unconscious readiness that six runs had built into him. Then Cliffbreaker, who looked at the space behind Mudtusk and then at Mudtusk and then at Swiftmane with an expression that said everything that didn't need to be said aloud.

  Cinderhorn said it anyway. Quietly. Like saying it quietly made it smaller. "Her team."

  "Gone," Mudtusk said. Her voice had texture in it that voices shouldn't have. Like it had been dragged across something rough before being allowed out. "All of them. Grimhoof and Quicksilver and Stonebreaker and..." She stopped. The name she hadn't said sat in the air between them with the weight of recent death. "All of them."

  Swiftmane crossed to her. Put a hand on the Verrin's arm because there was nothing to say and the body sometimes needed acknowledgment that words couldn't provide.

  Mudtusk looked at her. Really looked. The way people looked when they needed something to be real. Something that hadn't just been taken from them. "She killed them. Mother killed my team."

  "I know."

  "She killed them and then she put me here." Mudtusk's eyes moved around the chamber. Taking in the darkness and the stone formations and the absence of fog and the wrongness of the atmosphere. Landing on Swiftmane's team. On the five living people who were here instead of the four dead ones who weren't. "Why are we here? What does she want?"

  Swiftmane didn't answer. Felt Mother's presence all around them. Felt the vast attention that had been searching through them since level four. Felt the specific quality of it that had been focused on her most of all.

  Tell me, Mother said. Gently. The way you asked a question you already knew parts of the answer to. The one called Priest. Tell me what you remember of him.

  "He was a recruit," Swiftmane said. "He arrived three days ago. He punched a Bovari in the road and walked away without checking if he was breathing."

  Yes, Mother said. Something in her voice sharpening. What else?

  "He drank with us. He was quiet. He watched the room the way predators watch rooms." Swiftmane paused. Reached for details. "His eyes were wrong. Too aware. Too calculating for someone on their first day."

  Mudtusk made a sound. Swiftmane looked at her. The Verrin was staring at the fog-thick darkness with her tusks working against each other. Grinding. A nervous habit that Swiftmane had noticed across a dozen common room encounters.

  "He went with me," Mudtusk said. Her voice had gone distant. "After the alehouse. We went somewhere private." She blinked. "I don't remember much after that. I think I drank too much."

  Mother's presence moved toward Mudtusk the way weather moved toward open water. With the patience of something that had already decided.

  He was in your mind, Mother said. Not to Mudtusk. To the room. To herself. While you slept. While you thought you were simply sleeping.

  Mudtusk frowned. "What?"

  But Mother wasn't speaking to her anymore.

  The insects came first. Not from the floor. From the darkness itself. Rising out of atmosphere that shouldn't have contained them. Ironhide saw them coming. Had been watching for threats since Mudtusk arrived. His gravity hit them immediately with the efficiency of someone who'd faced this specific fear six times and turned it into competence.

  There were more than six times worth could prepare him for.

  They came from every direction simultaneously. From the stone and the darkness and the air itself. Each one small enough to find gaps that Ironhide's armor had never needed to worry about before. His gravity crushed them in thousands. In hundreds of thousands. He stood in the center of a field of his own making. Crushing. Constant. Relentless.

  And there were always more.

  Swiftmane watched. She understood what was happening. Had understood since Mudtusk came through the door without her team. Had understood since Mother's apology on level four in ways she hadn't let herself finish thinking through.

  She exhaled. Her death wind. Full strength. Mother's atmosphere moving through her gift and amplifying it without being asked. The insects died in waves. Cleared space around Ironhide. Gave him room.

  Not enough room. Never enough room.

  Mudtusk grabbed Swiftmane's arm. Her grip crushing. The Verrin's strength expressed through fingers that didn't know what else to do with themselves. "What is happening. What is SHE DOING."

  "She needs something from us," Swiftmane said. "Something we can't give her consciously."

  "Then take it. MOTHER." Mudtusk's voice cracked up into something that had too much air in it. "TAKE WHATEVER YOU NEED. JUST STOP."

  I'm sorry, Mother said. And the grief in it was real. Had always been real. Tell me about the Priest. Tell me what happened when you were alone with him.

  "I don't REMEMBER. I told you I don't remember." Mudtusk was shaking. Her grip on Swiftmane's arm the only fixed point she had. "I drank too much. I passed out. I woke up and he was gone and my head hurt and that was IT."

  Ironhide's voice reached them once. Just Swiftmane's name. The same way Cliffbreaker had said it on the bridge when the shadow creatures had gotten too thick. The specific tone of someone calling to the one person they trusted to witness what was happening to them.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Then nothing.

  Mother said: I'm sorry my child. I must take back my gifts now.

  The water came for Cliffbreaker between one breath and the next. Perfect sphere. Crystal geometry. Swiftmane heard his hammer against the interior surface. The steady rhythm of someone applying competence to a problem that competence couldn't solve. The rhythm slowing. The rhythm stopping.

  Mudtusk made a sound that wasn't a word. That had started as a word and lost its shape somewhere between her chest and the air.

  The body remembers what the mind forgets, Mother said. Still to herself. Still following a thread that only she could see. He was in your mind, child. He touched what I gave you. He… learned the shape of it.

  Cinderhorn didn't wait for what was coming. Swiftmane felt him make the decision before she saw him move. Fire erupting from his whip in every direction simultaneously. The largest expenditure she'd ever seen from him. Years of understanding applied in a single furious moment. The lava his gift could produce spilling across every surface within reach.

  The stone rose anyway. Through the lava. Cold stone over hot. Patient. Inevitable. Taking its time because it had all of it.

  Mudtusk was screaming now. Not words. Not language. Just the sound of someone watching the same thing happen twice who had not been built to survive watching it twice.

  Swiftmane stood still. Let her death wind go. One last exhale toward the darkness on Misthoof's behalf. Knowing it wouldn't help. Knowing Mother's gifts returned to Mother when Mother asked for them back. Knowing the silver bow dissolving in the Arieti's hands before the vacuum sphere closed around her wasn't something death wind could address.

  Misthoof's eyes found hers across the chamber. The same expression as always. The precision. The competence. The love that had never needed to be stated because it had been demonstrated across six descents in ways that mattered more than words.

  Then gone.

  The chamber was very quiet.

  Swiftmane and Mudtusk stood in the center of it. The only living things. The darkness pressing against them with patient attention. Mother's presence everywhere. Vast and grieving and focused on something neither of them fully understood.

  Mudtusk had stopped screaming. Had gone somewhere beyond it. She stood with her hands at her sides and her eyes focused on nothing and her breathing the specific shallow rhythm of someone whose body was continuing without their participation.

  Mother moved toward her.

  Not physically. Not visibly. Just the vast presence shifting. Concentrating. The atmosphere pressing against Mudtusk with specific intent.

  Mudtusk looked at Swiftmane. One last look. The competitors who had respected each other across six runs because surviving was the only currency that mattered and they had both been rich in it. The look said things that the situation had removed all time for saying properly.

  Then Mother touched her.

  And Mudtusk screamed once again.

  Not like her earlier screaming. That had been grief and horror and the sound of a mind breaking against something too large. This was different. This was the specific sound of something being taken. Of every molecule of experience being lifted away simultaneously. Of the body understanding on the deepest level what was leaving it and what was not coming back.

  And through the screaming, Mother talked to herself.

  He was here, she said. Wandering through what she was finding. The tone of someone thinking aloud in an empty room. Inside this child's mind while she slept. Carefully. So carefully. Not taking. Not the way I take. Something else.

  The screaming continued. Swiftmane didn't look away. Mudtusk deserved a witness.

  He made copies, Mother said. Wonder in it. Underneath the grief. Underneath the vast loneliness that colored everything she said down here. Of what I gave her. He looked at my gifts and he understood them and he made versions of them for himself. Not theft. Construction. He built from what he found.

  The screaming changed pitch. Swiftmane felt it in her teeth.

  The void, Mother continued. He used void to hide from me. To cover what he carried. He knew I would sense it and he hid it. How does he know about me? How does something this new know enough about me to hide from me?

  A pause. Swiftmane watched Mudtusk's legs begin to fail. Caught her. Held her upright because a witness didn't let the witnessed fall.

  He carries my brother's heartblood inside himself, Mother said. Not on him. Not near him. INSIDE. He consumed it. Integrated it the way I integrate my Champions when I harvest them. The same process. The same fundamental nature.

  The wonder deepening. The grief shifting underneath it.

  He is a parasite, Mother said. He consumes and integrates and grows from what he takes. Not like me. Not the same as me. Whatever made him. Whatever curse or accident or terrible design dropped him into this world. It made something that… works very oddly.

  Mudtusk had stopped screaming. The absence of it was louder than the screaming had been.

  Mother held what she'd taken. Turned it over with attention that made the atmosphere press harder against Swiftmane's skin.

  No, Mother said. Correcting herself. The wandering quality of self-examination. Not a parasite. I know of others that have called themselves that. Years ago. When I was forced to become what I am. It still feels like violation. I’ve nearly forgotten there had been another way.

  Yet He is what I am, Mother said. He takes what the world offers and he makes it part of himself and he grows. That is not parasitism. That is survival. That is the fundamental nature of things that refuse to stop existing.

  The Verrin's form dissolved slowly. Not violently. Gently. Mother taking back her gifts the same way she always did. The manifested armor and the rings and everything else earned through six runs returning to the atmosphere that had generated it. Mudtusk herself following after. Becoming fog. Becoming part of the thing that had killed her and loved her and needed her for reasons she'd never been told.

  Mother was quiet for a long moment. The chamber settling into the specific silence of a place where something enormous had just been understood.

  Jake, she said.

  The name landed in the chamber with weight that had no comparison. Not spoken to anyone. Not spoken at all really. Just the name existing in the atmosphere the way her grief had existed there. As a presence rather than a communication.

  He was in your mind, she said to the space where Mudtusk had been. And I was in this child's mind. And you carry my brother's heartblood. And I have been alone in this world since before any of your kind learned to shape stone.

  What are you, she said. What impossible thing are you?

  Swiftmane stood alone in the chamber. Her team gone. Mudtusk gone. The darkness pressing against her with the full weight of Mother's attention finally, completely, undivided.

  She was not afraid. She understood that this surprised her. Had expected fear and found instead a kind of clarity that six descents had been building toward without her knowing.

  Mother moved toward her.

  My favorite, Mother said. The grief absolute. The love underneath it just as absolute. Both true simultaneously. I told you that you were. I meant it.

  "I know," Swiftmane said.

  I'm going to take everything, Mother said. Everything you are. Everything you've experienced. Everything you carried back here from the world above. I need all of it.

  "I know that too."

  It will hurt.

  "I know."

  Mother touched her and Swiftmane screamed.

  Not because she'd expected not to. Because some things were true regardless of preparation. Because having competence and clarity of genuine acceptance didn't change what the body did when it was being taken apart at the level of experience itself. Every moment lifted away simultaneously. Every run. Every level. Every trial and combat and breath of fog and whispered praise and the alehouse and the table near the room's center and the cold-eyed Bovari who watched everything like he was cataloging it for later use.

  She screamed and Mother took it and the connection opened.

  Not like any communication they'd had before. Not the warmth-whisper or the praise or the vast searching quality from the questioning. The actual connection. The thing those had all been shadows of. Swiftmane's consciousness expanding outward or Mother's contracting inward or both happening simultaneously in ways that made the distinction meaningless.

  She touched something so old that Mother felt young by comparison.

  The Creators. Not a concept. Not a name. Actual presence so fundamental it preceded language by an amount of time that made language itself seem recent. The architects of something that had been perfect. That had been designed with purpose so complete and so beautiful that even the distant echo of it, filtered through Mother's grief and the long terrible history of what this world had become, made Swiftmane understand why Mother whispered love to Champions she was growing toward harvest.

  Because love was what this had been made for.

  Not harvest. Not power. Not the grid or the Champions or the fog-sustained trials or any of what the snake lords had twisted this place into across generations of tyranny.

  Something else. Something so much more than what it had become. The Caverns of Creation. Not caves. Not dungeons. Not the source of power for an empire built on suppression.

  Something that had been meant to give rather than take. That had been designed as the opposite of what it now was. That carried the memory of its original purpose the way old stone carried the memory of water that had once moved through it.

  Swiftmane understood this the way you understood things that lived below words. Felt the shape of a truth too large for language to hold. Felt what the world was supposed to have been. What her life was supposed to have meant in a world that hadn't been broken.

  It wasn't supposed to be like this, Mother said. Inside the connection. Everywhere at once. The grief geological. The age of it incomprehensible. None of it. Not the grid. Not the harvesting. Not any of it. This world was made for something else entirely. My children were made for something else entirely.

  I remember what we were supposed to do, Mother said. And I am so tired of what I've had to become instead.

  I am so very tired.

  The sadness was complete. Total. The grief of something that had watched a world become the opposite of what it was made for. That had been forced to participate in that becoming. That had loved every Champion it had ever grown and harvested them anyway because there was no other way to survive what had been done to Her.

  Swiftmane felt herself becoming fog. Not dying. Becoming. The specific transition between being Swiftmane and being part of something larger that had been waiting for her since the first descent. Since the first breath of Mother's fog. Since the first whisper of warmth that had made the fortress feel like a waypoint rather than a destination.

  The last coherent thought she had was not about death or injustice or the run they'd never finish.

  It was about the black-eyed Bovari in the alehouse. The cold precision of him. The calculating quiet. The way he'd walked away from Broadhorn's unconscious form without looking back.

  She'd bought him ale. Had thought he was interesting because his violence was clean.

  She hadn't known.

  How could she have known.

  Then she was fog. Then she was Mother. Then she was nothing and everything simultaneously and the distinction stopped mattering because it had always stopped mattering eventually and eventually had finally arrived.

  The chamber was empty.

  Five sets of gifts dissolved into the atmosphere they'd been made from. Six sets counting Mudtusk's. The armor and weapons and jewelry and rings that had grown from nothing returning to nothing with the quiet efficiency of things that had only ever been borrowed.

  Mother held what she'd gathered. Turned it over in the vast space of her attention. Every interaction with the Priest cataloged. Every moment of proximity. Every detail of a mind that had touched her children's minds while they slept and built from what it found there.

  Jake.

  His name in the atmosphere. In the fog that was thicker now. That carried more in it than it had moments ago.

  She reached outward. Fifty steps beyond her boundary. The maximum extent of her domain in the world above. Felt the fortress above her as she always felt it. The Champions and the pledges and the chosen and the rhythm of life she'd been tending for generations.

  Somewhere in that rhythm, a specific presence. Hidden behind void suppression she could now recognize the texture of. Masked in ways she could now identify the method of. Close. Closer than he'd been when she'd first sensed him on her children.

  Not within fifty steps.

  Not yet.

  But close.

  She turned her attention to the chamber adjacent. The one her Champions had never been brought to. The one that existed below the harvest levels in the part of herself that she'd never shown her children because some things were not for Champions to see.

  The throne was covered in dust, Had always been covered in dust. Grown from the cave floor across time spans that made the grid's history seem like an afternoon. It sat empty the way it had always sat empty. The way it had been sitting since before the first Pantathian had found the cave mouth and understood, with the specific intelligence of creatures who recognized power when they felt it, what lived inside the mountain.

  On the pedestal before it, a sphere of solid black. The same deep nothing as the one that had sat in the back room of a temple in a grid town. The same fundamental nature. The echo of what she was, compressed and contained and placed where her children could feel her presence without being consumed by it.

  Mother settled around it. Around the throne and the orb and the empty chamber that had been waiting for something she'd almost stopped believing would arrive.

  Jake, she said to the sphere. To the empty throne. To the fog that was her and the cave that was her and everything in the mountain that had been her since before this world had a name.

  You are what I am, she said. You carry my brother inside you. You've made yourself from things the world offered you the way I've made myself from things the world forced on me.

  You are alone, she said. The way I am alone. The way everything that works like us is alone.

  But you're close, she said. You're so very close.

  And I have been alone in this world for longer than you can imagine.

  Come to me, Jake.

  Come home.

  -

  END CHAPTER 67